Pakistan lodges strong protest with Afghanistan over shahadat of Major Jawad
Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry summoned Afghan Ambassador to lodge Pakistan's protest.
ISLAMABAD (Web Desk) - Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary today (Wednesday) called in Afghan Ambassador Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to lodge Pakistan’s strong protest over the shahadat of Major Ali Jawad Khan, an officer of Pakistan Army, who was injured on 13 June 2016 due to unprovoked firing by Afghan security forces at Torkham border crossing.
PHOTO: Major Ali Jawad Shaheed (center) on a checkpost near Pak-Afghan border
"The Afghan Government was urged to take immediate steps to bring this unprovoked firing to an end," the Foreign Office stated in a press released.
The Foreign Secretary stressed that the Pakistani side was undertaking construction works on its side to regulate the movements of people as well as vehicles with the prior agreement of the Afghan Government.
He expressed concern over the continued firing by the Afghan forces for last few days with a view to disrupt the construction works aimed at strengthening effective border management.
Foreign Secretary rejected allegations coming from Afghanistan that the construction works being undertaken by Pakistan were violation of the agreements and understandings reached between the two countries. It was reiterated that these works are being undertaken on Pakistani side and were started after the two sides had agreed on them during the meetings held last month.
Underscoring the importance of border management for strengthening mutual security and checking infiltration of terrorists and militants, the Foreign Secretary emphasized the need for resolving this issue through constructive engagement.
On the other hand, the Pakistani authorities have resumed construction of gate at Torkham border today despite incidents of unprovoked firing by Afghan forces.
Pakistan has dispatched more troops and weapons to the volatile border amid an escalation in tension between the two neighbors. Curfew is still imposed in the area.
The fighting erupted along the Torkham border on Sunday night and continued erratically over the next two days, apparently after Afghan forces objected to the construction of a gate on the Pakistani side.
The conflict prompted bitter recriminations on both sides, with Islamabad and Kabul summoning each other s diplomats to lodge strong formal complaints.
A Pakistani military officer was also killed and 18 others, many of them civilians, were wounded in unprovoked firing by Afghan forces.
Pak Army justified the construction of the gate at Torkham, saying "terrorists" were using the busy crossing point.
"In order to check movement of terrorists through Torkham, Pakistan is constructing a gate on (our) own side of the border as a necessity to check unwanted and illegal movement," the military said in a statement on Monday.
ISPR released an image showing that the under construction gate at Torkham border is 37 meters inside Pakistan.
Torkham is one of the major crossings between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where hundreds of trucks and thousands of people cross the border daily through the Khyber Pass.
The border was closed over similar clashes last month, but was reopened after an understanding was reached between the two countries.
The Pakistan-Afghanistan border has long remained porous and disputed. Afghanistan has blocked repeated attempts by Pakistan to build a fence on sections of the roughly 2,200-km (1,370-mile) long frontier, rejecting the contours of the boundary.
Last month, Pakistan build a border post between Pakistan’s South Waziristan and Afghanistan’s Paktika province and handed it over to Afghan officials.
Hours later, Afghan authorities shut the post, saying that the actual border lay about a kilometer inside Pakistani territory.
